Bangladesh student leader Sharif Osman Hadi dies in Singapore hospital

• The interim government announces mourning, special prayers throughout the country.
• Police launch manhunt, offer reward for arrest of suspects.
• Muhammad Yunus says the attack is aimed at derailing the upcoming polls.

A leader of Bangladesh’s 2024 uprising who was wounded in an assassination attempt and flown to Singapore for treatment has died in the city-state, officials said Friday.

Masked assailants shot the representative of the student protest group Inqilab Moncho, Sharif Osman Hadi, 32, a week ago as he was leaving a mosque in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, wounding him in the ear.

“Despite the best efforts of doctors…, Mr Hadi succumbed to his injuries,” Singapore’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that it was helping Bangladeshi authorities repatriate his body.

Inqilab Moncho first announced Hadi’s death in a Facebook post, stating: “In the struggle against Indian hegemony, Allah has accepted the great revolutionary Osman Hadi as a witness.”

Hadi was running in the February 2026 election, the first parliamentary elections since a student-led uprising toppled the autocratic rule of former prime minister Sheikh Hasina last year.

He was flown to Singapore on Monday for treatment.

In Dhaka, the interim government led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus confirmed Hadi’s death.

“My deepest condolences. His death is an irreparable loss to the nation,” Yunus said.

“The country’s march to democracy cannot be stopped by fear, terror or bloodshed,” he said in a televised address.

The government also announced special prayers at mosques after Friday prayers and half a day of mourning on Saturday.

Hadi was a senior leader of the student protest group Inqilab Mancha and has been an outspoken critic of India — Hasina’s old ally, where the ousted prime minister remains in self-imposed exile.

Manhunt for armed men

Police in Bangladesh have launched a manhunt for the gunmen who shot Hadi, releasing photos of two main suspects and offering a reward of five million taka (about $42,000) for information leading to their arrest.

Yunus, the 85-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate who leads Bangladesh until February 12 elections, said last Saturday that the attack was a premeditated attack carried out by a powerful network, without giving a name.

He said “the aim of the conspirators is to derail the election”, adding that the attack was “symbolic — it was meant to show their power and sabotage the entire electoral process”.

Muslim-majority Bangladesh, a nation of 170 million people, will directly vote for 300 members of its parliament, while another 50 will be selected from the women’s list.

On the same day, a referendum will be held on an important package of democratic reforms.

Tensions are high as parties prepare for the polls and the country remains volatile.

Hasina, convicted in absentia last month and sentenced to death, has refused to return to attend her trial. She remains in hiding in India, despite repeated requests from Dhaka to hand her over to New Delhi.

The last election, held in January 2024, gave Hasina a fourth consecutive term and her Awami League 222 seats, but was denounced by opposition parties as a fraud.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), led by three-time former prime minister Khaleda Zia, is widely tipped to win the upcoming vote.

Zia is in intensive care in Dhaka and her son and political heir Tarique Rahman is due to return from exile to Britain after 17 years on December 25.